Ida Applebroog and the State of Feminist Art
by Kathleen MassaraPage 2 of 2
In the 60s, Applebroog attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, before, as she said in an artist's statement, "feminism was out of the closet." A decade later, however, feminist art was at its peak. Carolee Schneemann presented "Interior Scroll" (1975), a performance piece in which she read from a long roll of paper she slowly pulled from her vagina. Schneeman referred to the mystical and sacred aspects of the taboo organ, reveling in, as she writes on her website, "unifying [the] spirit and flesh in Goddess worship." That same year, Tee Corine published the Cunt Coloring Book (1975), featuring tangled 70s bush and the occasional finger probing labial folds. This was officially the era of vaginal exploration, a time when many female artists confronted issues historically viewed as too personal or embarrassing to put on display. For instance, Judy Chicago's 1971 photolithograph "Red Flag" depicting a bloody tampon being extracted from in between a woman's legs, was quickly followed by "Menstruation Bathroom" (1972), which featured a pile of used tampons stuffed in a trash can inside an ordinary bathroom in the female-only exhibition, "Womanhouse."
Visitors were not allowed inside "Menstruation Bathroom." Instead, they had to view the piece through a sheet of gauze hung from the doorframe. Viewers of "MONALISA" will have a similar experience as they navigate the space around the house. Instead of the original's bulletproof glass, Applebroog's piece is covered in thin parchment paper.
She said, "The interesting thing about Duchamp was the mustache on the Mona Lisa. And the bottom in French was 'she's got a hot ass.'" She continues, "You have Dali and Warhol and other great artists that have done Mona Lisa [but] this had to do about me, not artists opposing other artists."
Applebroog is not Hannah Wilke, opposing Duchamp's work on principle. Instead, the octogenarian artist created the Mona Lisa she wanted to see, focusing on the quiet repetition of a single, intensely personal form. The room is lit from within and gives off a soft inviting glow, but the gap near the doorframe reveals an untouchable figure beyond our grasp. Unsurprisingly, due to the history of her work, the figure rendered is childlike and deformed, his skin blotchy and mottled hues of red. "It was the most organic thing that happened, it sort of just made itself," Applebroog said.
Applebroog's daughter, the artist Beth B., is featured in The Visible Vagina, a group exhibition at David Nolan Gallery and Francis Naumann Fine Art that opens this week. Inspired by the work of Eve Ensler, the creator of The Vagina Monologues, the exhibition revisits the taboo part of the female anatomy that still seems to mystify audiences forty years after Applebroog began her bathroom sketches.
Nevertheless, growing up in an era when the focus switched from feminism to gender studies, I found it difficult to relate to the themes behind "MONALISA." After circling the exterior, I began to examine the individual panels; each featured a different illuminated sketch of Applebroog's family jewels. In the end, I became much more interested in the form than the content. The gaps in between the paper and rough texture of the house beams provoked more of a reaction than seeing the simple line drawings. The second floor was filled with more than a hundred rescued vaginal sketches, and again, I was more curious about the water damage than the prurient forms before me. But even if the images no longer hold the same power as they would have in the 70s, the fact that it's Applebroog means that there is always something disturbing behind the comfortable façade.
(photos copyright © 2010 Hauser & Wirth)
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